Covenant Service Sermon: The Good News Of The Covenant

Jeremiah
31:31-34

Introduction

1. What Is A
Covenant?
What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘covenant’? In the days before
Gift Aid as a tax-efficient way of giving to charities, you made a covenant to
give a set amount for a period of seven (later, four) years. It was a
commitment you made and the Inland Revenue (as it was then called) blessed your
commitment when you proved you had fulfilled your promise.

Or covenants exist in other legal contexts. A piece of land
or property can be subject to a covenant.

It is personal, too – marriage is a covenant.

But, as our traditional reading for the Covenant Service
from Jeremiah shows, the covenant is an ancient idea. In biblical terms, it
goes back before conventional history. God made a covenant with Noah after the
flood not to repeat what he had done. He made a covenant with Abraham to make
his descendants a great nation who would bless the world. He made a covenant
with Israel at Sinai after he delivered them from Pharaoh, to bless them in the
Promised Land. They responded with obedience. If they disobeyed, God would
curse them.

And the Old Testament gives us several different images for
the covenant. It is pictured like that between a husband and a wife, as in this
passage. Elsewhere, it is likened to a father and a son – probably inferring a
father and an adopted son, where both parties take on specific commitments. And
it is compared implicitly to a treaty. That is, a treaty where a strong king
has delivered a weaker party from oppression (like God delivering Israel from
Egypt). The strong king promises continued protection and blessing, if the
weaker party willingly subjects itself to his rule. If it doesn’t, the
protection ceases.

So far, I haven’t answered the question, ‘What is a
covenant?’ I hope, however, that I have given some images that help. From them,
we can gain an idea of what a covenant is. It involves an initial unconditional
deed of love. It is followed by mutual commitment that leads to further
blessings. Lack of such commitment destroys the blessings. It is important and
serious. It captures powerfully the relationship between God and God’s people.

The critical point, then, about a covenant for today is
this: God saves and blesses first.
Our promises, obedience and faithfulness are a response to that. We do not make
commitments in order to win God around to us. We make our promises because God
has already acted in salvation. In a Christian sense, he has already sent his
Son to live, die and be raised again for us. He has already sent his Holy
Spirit. Because of all this, we respond with gratitude and love.

That is what today is about – the faithfulness of God, and
our gratitude. And I hope that puts into perspective the seriousness of what we
say today. A covenant is not about God putting us through the wringer, but
about God winning the devotion of our hearts.

2. What Went Wrong
With The Old Covenant?
Something went wrong with Israel. In the passage, God is making a new covenant
with his people (verse 31), because his people have broken the old one (verse
32). So what went wrong?

Put it like this: what happens when you tell a child not to
do something? Chances are, curiosity is aroused, and the child goes right
ahead, doing the very deed you warned them not to do. There seems to be an
inbuilt tendency to do what others tell us is wrong.

Elevated from the personal level to that of society, it
means that you can’t promote social change just by changing a nation’s laws. In
Jeremiah’s time, the righteous king Josiah had tried that. Although Jeremiah
admired Josiah (22:15-16), he realised that the king’s reforms ended up being
superficial:

Merely to destroy pagan cult shrines and forbid their cult
practices, merely to centralize and regularize worship in Jerusalem, merely to
reactivate the annual Passover and other formal aspects of worship did not
really touch the basic problem.[1]

In fact, it wasn’t that long after Josiah’s reign that
judgment fell on Judah. Changing the laws, even to conform to Scripture, was
not enough.

It’s rather like an elderly woman who spoke to me after a
service I took when I was a young Local Preacher: ‘If only this country would
get back to the Ten Commandments, everything would be all right,’ she said.

The problem is one of the human heart. Rebecca Manley Pippert, an evangelist who
has worked with students mostly in the United States, tells this story:

I was sitting next to a beautiful black law student on a bus
to Salem, Oregon. We were discussing our heroes when she told me Karl Marx was
her hero. When I asked why, she said, “Because of his passionate regard for the
oppressed.”

“I agree with that concern,” I responded, “but what is Marx’s
view of the universe? For example, I know he holds no belief in God.”

“Oh yes,” she replied, “Marx is very intelligent. He sees the
universe as godless, and we have meaning only in a corporate sense of class. We
are not significant as individuals.”

“Yet you admire his regard for the oppressed even though they
are ultimately insignificant. It seems strange to value them so highly when
they are random products of a universe. Why not manipulate them as you please?”
I asked.

“I couldn’t do that. I guess if my natural response is to
feel people are significant then I need a philosophic system that says the same
thing,” she astutely observed. “But I believe we are basically good. If we
could live in a classless society, we would be free of the things that weigh us
down. I really think on the basis of economic determinism we will be saved.”

“Do you really believe if we lived in the ideal Marxist
society our problem would be voted out?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she said.

I took a deep breath and said, “Listen. I know a guy. He is
one of the worst racists I have ever met. If he lived with you for fifty years
in your classless society, every time he saw you he’d still think ‘nigger’. How
can Marx wipe out the ugliness and hatred of a bigot?”

She turned away from me, her eyes glaring, and, looking out
the window she said, “Right on. We’ve been trying to change that for centuries.
And all of the rules and laws in the world can’t change you. The laws curb behaviour,
they can force you to treat me more justly, but they can’t make you love me.”[2]

Rules and laws at best curb behaviour, but can’t make people
love one another. This raises a question: if God knew that a covenant based on
laws would fail, why introduce it? Paul supplies an answer in Galatians: the
law was like a tutor looking after children until Christ came. By showing our
failings, it demonstrated our need for faith in him.[3]

And that leads to our third and final question this morning:

3. What Is Different
About The New Covenant?
Let’s go back to the conversation between Rebecca Manley Pippert and the law
student. We pick it up where we left off, with the student’s insight that laws
can only curb behaviour, they cannot make people love one another. Pippert
writes:

I knew I had struck a raw nerve but I felt I had to. Anyone who
has suffered as blacks have in this society must know that an external change
does not mean an internal change. I said, “You tell me you know people are
significant, and you need a system that says so. Now you’re saying that the
real evil comes from within us. So you need a system that regards evil as
internal and a solution that transforms radically not curbs superficially.
Right?”

“Yeah, well it’ll take more than a human attempt to change us
that much. But we need it,” she said.

“I couldn’t agree more. In fact, that’s the very kind of
system I’ve found,” I said.

“Really? Hey, what revolution are you into?”

When I told her I followed Jesus, I think I had better not
quote her exact words of response![4]

But this is the Gospel of the New Covenant. It is about an
inner transformation. Instead of an external law on tablets of stone or statute
books, God promises,

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Verse 33)

This is the work of the Holy Spirit, working on our minds
and wills, not only telling us the will of God but also enabling us to follow
that will.

And

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other,
‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will
forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Verse 34)

There is direct personal knowledge of God, not requiring a
priestly intermediary. Whatever your reasons for needing a minister, you don’t
need me as your means of access to God. In the New Covenant, you have that for
yourself. In an email newsletter I receive, the writer in his last bulletin
bemoaned the clergy/laity distinction in many churches, and said this:

Simply stated, the clergy is the
professional head of household for a family full of dependents.[5]

But you are not my dependents. Together
we all have knowledge of the Lord. Why? ‘For I will forgive their iniquity, and
remember their sin no more.’ The barrier was sin. But you do not have a priest
who offers the right sacrifices any more. One priest has made a sacrifice that
has covered all sin for all time. That priest is Jesus, and the sacrifice was
of himself. Nobody needs to be dependent upon anybody other than him for
knowledge of the Lord.

The New Covenant God forgives our
sins through the Cross of Christ. Therefore, we all have access to God. In
addition, God enables us to do his will by the presence of the Holy Spirit within
us, writing his ways on our lives.

Put that in the context of what a
covenant is. God has acted in salvation – he has sent Christ, who has died for
us and been raised for us. He calls us to respond by following his ways. Even then,
he blesses us with the gift of the Holy Spirit, whose ministry not only speaks
the Word of God but also shapes it within our lives. Our covenant response is a
response to salvation, and it is a response not made alone but in the power of
God. We respond out of love, because God has shown his amazing love to us. And that
same God makes our response possible.

I recall my parents telling me as
a boy that there were some people who took the Covenant Service promises so
seriously that they honestly thought they couldn’t make them, and so absented
themselves from church that Sunday of the year. Looking back on those comments,
I now find them tragic. It sounds like the absentees perceived God as condemning
and heavy-handed. However, I see the Covenant here as Good News through and
through. Let us renew our Covenant promises today, knowing that the God who
draws us here is full of love, mercy, grace and faithfulness.

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